Norway: Rock Band - Full 84 Song Wish-Game (with tiers, song links and wishlist DLC)

Ever since the canceled Japan: Rock Band, I have thought it would have been cool with country-specific music games, and as a Norwegian person always wanted to see more music from around here show up in rhythm games. Then I got bored last year and decided to make a hypothetical Rock Band game with songs by Norwegian artists, and I ended up being pretty happy with the result, so posting it here in case somebody else might enjoy it as well.

In this setlist I tried to strike a good balance between internationally known stuff and stuff that is mostly known within the country, and even though there is a lot of Metal because, well, Norway, I also tried to balance out the genres otherwise to make it feel more like a "real game", if that makes sense.

Also sorry in advance about some of the song links being low quality or being weird fan music videos or such, some of these songs are hard to find online. Also for "Have Fun", "Queen of All Queens", "Offerdans" and "Never Ever" be aware of a lot of flashing lights in the video.

Without further ado, and with tier pictures in the links of the headers, by band tier:

I like the idea of a country-specific Rock Band side game, as it could introduce players from different part of the world to many songs from that country.

As a American who loves all kinds of music, especially Rock Music, I enjoy the various music that are from countries other than my own (Japanese Music is my favorite kind of Foreign Music). And seeing your wishlist has Video links has gave me an opportunity to listen to what Norway has to offer in the music industry.

I only knew a-ha, Ida Maria, Dimmu Borgir, and Ylvis, and thanks to the Youtube links, I've gotten to enjoy most of what Norway has to offer. And I thank you for introducing me to Norway's music scene.

I like the idea of a country-specific Rock Band side game, as it could introduce players from different part of the world to many songs from that country.

As a American who loves all kinds of music, especially Rock Music, I enjoy the various music that are from countries other than my own (Japanese Music is my favorite kind of Foreign Music). And seeing your wishlist has Video links has gave me an opportunity to listen to what Norway has to offer in the music industry.

I only knew a-ha, Ida Maria, Dimmu Borgir, and Ylvis, and thanks to the Youtube links, I've gotten to enjoy most of what Norway has to offer. And I thank you for introducing me to Norway's music scene.

A-ha is Norway's most successful band by most standards, and although they are mostly known for their hit single "Take on Me" overseas they're still around to this day, with their sound changing and developing a lot over the years, which I wanted to represent in this pack.

"Cry Wolf" and the James Bond theme "The Living Daylights" is more of their signature Synthpop goodness, while "Manhattan Skyline" saw them experiment with contrasts of calm synth parts and hard rock riffs. Lots of fast and interesting parts across the instruments, as well as great vocal tracks obviously.

As the 90's came along, they started moving towards a more atmospheric and guitar oriented sound all together. Their cover of "Crying In The Rain" is possibly one of their most beloved songs, and while it wouldn't be super involved on anything (albeit with a bunch of the strings alt-charted to guitar I'd bet since that's how they play it live apparently) it would be a fantastic vocal track.

"Dark is the Night for All" and "Velvet" are also ballads but with more going on and with their new rock sound fully formed, in which I'd imagine they would also both work pretty well as full band tracks. Meanwhile, "Summer Moved On" is a up-tempo and epic sounding track that allows Morten Harket to go full out with his vocal virtuoso and is in my opinion the stand-out track of the pack.

Last but not least is "Objects in the Mirror", a more laid-back track from their most recent album from 2015, while also including "Take on Me" as a rewind for the sake of completion.

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Next week's DLC tiers will be related to a certain contest that has a completely different name in Norway than in most of the world apparently.

Surprised you didn't pick The Sun Always Shines on TV, which I would have thought was their third best-known song after Take On Me and The Living Daylights, at least internationally.

I'm definitely going to have to go back and look through some of the stuff I'm less familiar with in your setlist though. There's a lot of metal in there that I'd be pretty hyped about seeing in Rock Band, but I'm hardly one-dimensional in regards to what I like.

"The Sun Always Shines On TV" is part of the main setlist (appears under the "Nightmare" tier). Though I also need to listen through the songs from this setlist I don't know. I was shown a few of them and really liked what I heard (even using a few of them for my Norway pack for my RB5 setlist) so looking forward to hearing more of this!

The Eurovision Song Contests (or "Melodi Grand Prix" as we call it here) is a huge thing in Norway, to the point where my main setlist has a ton of stuff from the national finals in it already. However I saved the international winners and some other interesting entries for this pack in time for this years finals.

Bobbysock's "La det Swinge" is our first international winner, from 1985. It's a super-cheesy upbeat tune that would be a pretty good party song for the full band. It's also a good representation of how campy our 80's pop could possibly get.

Secret Garden's "Nocturne" is our second international winner, from 1995. This one is a calm New Age song that was controversial due to its focus on its instrumentation over its singing in a song contests. While pretty easy in general I'd imagine it be great on Keys and Vocals, as well as some alt-charting on Guitar. It's also apparently on the Shrek soundtrack

Alexander Rybak's "Fairytale" is our third and final international winner, from 2009. It set the record for highest scoring win (before they changed the scoring system) and is a Folk song with a very catchy chorus and a now iconic fiddle riff. Thinking the pizzicato strings would be put to Guitar, and in general also be a pretty good full band song.

The BlackSheep's "Oro jaska, beana" is the winner of Melodi Grand Prix Junior, a national kids version of the contests, from 2008. While most of the entries to MGP Junior are not really worth looking into, it occasionally had some interesting stuff, such as this Pop-Punk song about a dog who have a heart attack due to its neglectful owner, sung partially in Sami. (If only we had more stuff like this instead of the horror that is Markus & Martinus...)

Gothminister's "Utopia" and Ammunition's "Wrecking Crew" meanwhile are two contestants that didn't get to the finals but never the less were pretty memorable. Utopia is more Gothic Industrial Metal goodness, while Wrecking Crew is a cheesy Glam Metal anthem that bizarrely has a main riff performed through whistling.

And last, as a bonus, Jahn Teigen's (in)famous MGP version of "Mil etter mil", the song that took the Norwegian finals by storm but got a total of 0 points in the final, which paradoxically just made it even more popular. The album version (which I have on my main setlist) is a Pop-Rock song, while this version is a classic pompous Eurovision brass and orchestra tune where Teigen sings with all of his gusto.

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Next week will have a connection to Iceland, despite being released right before our independence day.

Dimmu Borgir is probably Norway's biggest Metal band, and at one point was even one of our biggest cultural exports. With over 20 years and a ton of lineup changes, the band have managed to stay relevant to this day, releasing a new album earlier this month, possibly due to their ability to experiment and innovate with each album.

"Under korpens vinger" and the re-record of "Stormblåst" shows their more straight forward Black Metal roots, meaning it would be some of the easier songs in the pack but still being active on most of the instruments, while "The Mourning Palace" is where their keys focus really starts to kick in, as well as having more going on with guitar and bass.

Come "Grotesquery Conceiled" and "Kings of the Carnival Creation" their symphonic elements have become a big part of their sound, as well as the instrumentation getting much more complex and shreddy, meaning some really good challenging songs for those into that.

"The Sacrilegious Scorn" and "Gateways" shows them moving towards a more melodic approach, mixing in choir and clean vocals alike that would be pretty challenging for the vocalists, which also applies to "Interdimensional Summit" from their newest album that can almost be described as Blackened Power Metal.

Last but not least adding in "The Serpentine Offering" from RBN as a rewind for obvious reasons.

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Next week will be a pack from a band considered one of the big 4 of Norwegian rock music.

Since May 17th is our independence day I felt I had to do SOMETHING for it in this thread, so what I came up with was the classic Polka tune from novelty/parody group Prima Vera (making ANOTHER appearance of Jahn Teigen in my tiers!) literary named "It is Norway that is good". To prove so, the song details our fantastic ability to drink lots of alcohol, our high amount of downpour, Jahn Teigen's Eurovision performance and other silly things.

So, hooray for Norway, 17th of May and oil, and all that sort of stuff! hey.

(still doing tiers for one of the big 4 of Norwegian rock music on Sunday btw)

Jokke & Valentinerne is considered to be one of the big 4 bands of Norwegian rock, having a unique and recognizable sound even when jumping between a lot of different genres, and being one of the few mainstream bands at the time that had slice of life lyrics about being a substance addict and being mentally ill sung from somebody who was living that themselves. The band broke up at the end of the 90's, and front man Joachim "Jokke" Nielsen tragically passed away due to a drug overdose in 2000, but the legacy of the band and their music is still very much alive to this day.

"Hvis jeg var deg" and "Øl" are both Punk classics, both about drinking that despite their somber undertones are incredibly upbeat and would be pretty fun to play on everything, especially Drums. "Hvor har du vært" meanwhile is a Punk Rock love duet that would also be fun on harmonies while maintaining the same Punk energy as the other songs from this album.

"Alt kan repareres" and "To fulle menn" meanwhile is more within the realms of Rock N' Roll and Folk Rock, showing the bands versatility, while still keeping with the Punk-y storytelling about Jokke's life in the lyrics. "Alt kan repareres" would also be pretty fun on Keys and Harmonies.

"Paranoid" shows them taking on a more Pop Punk direction, almost sounding like Green Day before Green Day became well known, while "Alt kan repeteres" is more of a Hard Rock song with a straight up Tom Morello solo at the end that would be really fun to play.

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I haven't decided what to do next week yet, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it has something to do with Norway. Probably.

I had no idea that so much of the music I listen to came from Norway. I mean, it's not that much of it, but I'm still impressed. Also, this sounds like an extremely interesting idea and there were some pretty good picks for your setlist